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“Before, you’d see the smiles on the way out,” Ms. Munn, a slender, fast-talking 29-year-old television host and actress, said recently. “It’s different when there are smiles on the way in.”

With an exaggerated toss of her hair, Ms. Munn simulated the generically upbeat entertainment industry-bots who greet her at these sessions. “Like, ‘O-liv-ee-aaa! Hi-eee!’ ” she said. “Everything’s
drawn oooout. Every syllable becomes five seconds loooong.”

In the past, she said, little was expected of her. “I’m always ready to go in and prove them wrong,” she said. “But there’s this excitement all of a sudden.”

Here’s another way to gauge her success: When that interview took place, in mid-May, Ms. Munn was merely a co-host of “Attack of the Show!,”
an evening roundup of video gaming, gadgets and pop culture shown on the G4 cable network, and a newly announced star of “Perfect Couples,”
an NBC comedy planned for a midseason premiere. Three weeks later she
had become the latest correspondent on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart,”
Comedy Central’s satirical newscast.

Through a combination of persistence, recklessness, savvy and cheesecakey photos in men’s magazines, Ms. Munn — who is also about to release a memoir, written with Mac Montandon, called “Suck It, Wonder
Woman!: The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek” (St. Martin’s Press) — has become a personality on the verge of a mainstream breakthrough.

That ascent has come with its costs and acquainted her with critics who say she might never have gotten where she is if she did not look the way she does.

But Ms. Munn says that no matter what kind of crowd she is playing to, she is always in control of how she is presented.

“I’m a ‘What you see is what I want you to see’ kind of girl,” she said. “When I first started, I just wanted to be perfect. I wanted to say I loved bunnies and rainbows and world peace.
I realized that the only way to be perfect was to embrace your imperfections. I kind of became that character.”

On “Attack of the Show!” Ms. Munn and her co-host, Kevin Pereira, visit technology shows, interview celebrities and perform skits. But perhaps her most memorable (if not downloaded) act on it is the time in February
2009 when she donned a French maid’s outfit and leaped, knees first, into a giant pudding-filled pie crust.

G4 says fetishistic stunts like these, not to mention Ms. Munn’s adventurous spirit, were crucial to reaching the finicky viewership it seeks. “You take a young male audience that has pretty much seen it all before,”
said Neal Tiles, its president, “and here’s a live show with an attractive female who has a great sense of humor and is up and game for doing almost anything.”

Ms. Munn said the pie jump was her suggestion (“a horrible, horrible idea”) and that it was just one facet of a comic sensibility — rapid-fire, unapologetically vulgar, frequently sexual — that runs
contrary to the expectations of male viewers.

“Guys are going around being jokey with their friends, and they don’t feel bad,” Ms. Munn said. “Guys are always like, ‘I’m just a guy.’ Oh really? I’m just a girl who
doesn’t care that you’re a guy.”

She added that this comic comprehension gives women an inherent advantage over men. “We can understand ourselves and you,” she said, “and you can only understand yourselves.”

Ms. Munn said this ability allows her the freedom to appear in revealing (but nonnude) pictorials in magazines like Playboy, Maxim and Complex, and to maintain a Web site, oliviamunn.com,
where fans can participate in video chats and post truth-or-dare suggestions for her. It has also won her the approval of some top comedy talents. After reading for a role on “30 Rock” that went to Elizabeth Banks, Ms. Munn was recommended to the “Perfect Couples” creators Jon Pollack (a former “30 Rock” producer) and Scott Silveri (a producer of “Friends”) by
Tina Fey, the “30 Rock” creator and star, and Robert Carlock,
an executive producer.

In an e-mail message Mr. Pollack and Mr. Silveri wrote that the endorsement of Mr. Pollack’s old bosses went a long way toward hiring Ms. Munn. “If those guys think someone is funny, that person is funny,”
they wrote.

Like the “Perfect Couples” creators, the producers of “The Daily Show” said they were unaware of Ms. Munn’s pinup popularity before they approached her. “We didn’t sit and have
a meeting and go: ‘You know what our viewers are looking for? A hot girl!’ ” said Rory Albanese, a “Daily Show” executive producer.

That explanation did not wash with many “Daily Show” fans. On women’s-interest Web sites like Jezebel.com commenters excoriated the program for using superficial
criteria to select one of its few female correspondents.

“I don’t want to say to anyone, ‘Don’t you dare pose in a bikini,’ ” said Irin Carmon, a Jezebel.com writer. “But there’s all kinds of women who have not pursued
that path, and aren’t getting nearly the attention she has, and who are known for their comedy.”

Ms. Munn said she has faced similar discouragement throughout her life, as far back as her childhood, when her mother, who is Chinese and emigrated to the United States from Vietnam, consistently tried to steer her away from
an acting career. “ ‘Oh no, you be lawyer, you like to talk,’ ” Ms. Munn said, imitating her mother’s broken English.

Raised by her mother and a stepfather who she describes as “really not a nice guy,” Ms. Munn said she grew up to be an anxious person who suffers from trichotillomania, a compulsion causing her to pull out her
eyelashes.

For Ms. Munn, making peace with this past sometimes involves therapy, and sometimes it involves dressing up as fictional male lust objects like Princess Leia or Wonder Woman (as she does in photos in her memoir), simultaneously
mocking and indulging fanboy fantasies.

“I hope it inspires other young girls to not be afraid of their sexuality, to not be afraid to be smart and sexy and funny,” she said.

But some women are more concerned with what they see as the message Ms. Munn conveys to her male fans.

“What she’s saying to men is, ‘I’m not like those other girls that are going to give you a hard time,’ ” said Ms. Carmon of Jezebel.com. “I’m going to laugh at all
your jokes, and I’m going to wear a French maid outfit while I’m doing it.”

A remaining hurdle for Ms. Munn is finding the time for her new gigs while still fulfilling her obligations to G4. (She is also in negotiations to appear in a feature comedy, “30 Minutes or Less,” from the director
of “Zombieland,” Ruben Fleischer)

Regarding her increasingly infrequent appearances on “Attack of the Show!,” Ms. Munn wrote via e-mail that she’ll “be gone more than normal.” She added, “But I will be back as much
as I can, even if that means no sleep.” G4 said she is under contract until May 2011, but it is optimistic that she can be accommodated.

She is hopeful that the more viewers see her in varying roles, the more breathing room she will have for comic experiments that do not reflect on her personally.

“When I jump into a giant pie as a French maid, I’m not playing a French maid,” she said. “That’s me that did that. On ‘The Daily Show’ or on a sitcom, that’s the character.
That’s what she’s doing.”

But does she aspire to a future free of pie jumps altogether?

“The fact that I still find pudding inside of my ear, I think, is answer enough.”

A version of this article appeared in print on June 27, 2010, on page AR14 of the New York edition.